1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a road environment recognition device that recognizes a road environment in front of a vehicle. The present disclosure also relates to a vehicle control device and a vehicle control method that utilize a lane marker recognized by the road environment recognition device to control the vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent vehicles are being installed with road environment recognition devices that use cameras and radar to recognize the road environment in front. For example, Japanese Patent No. 4047249 describes (in Claim 6 and paragraphs [0060] to [0065], [0090]) a device that uses information acquired by a camera and/or radar to recognize guardrails and lane markers, and to determine three dimensional bodies that are positioned outside of the guardrails and lane markers as erroneous recognitions, and to exclude them from being subject to recognition.
A vehicle control device exists that control vehicles using a road environment recognition device. The vehicle control device controls the vehicle while recognizing lane markers on either side of a lane using the road environment recognition device. However, there are roads that have a three dimensional object such as a guardrail provided at a lane boundary, and sometimes there are no lane markers provided to such roads. Such a road environment recognition device is not able to recognize lane markers on such roads. The vehicle control device is accordingly not able to control the vehicle.
The device in Japanese Patent No. 4047249 is able to recognize guardrails and lane markers actually provided, but is not able to recognize lane markers in a road not provided with lane markers. Thus a vehicle cannot be controlled on a road not provided with lane markers, even employing the device of Japanese Patent No. 4047249.